“Reason 1.—That God might thereby the more set forth and clear unto us his justifying grace by Christ’s righteousness, and clear the truth of it to all our hearts. When the Apostle, long after his first conversion, was in the midst of that great and famous battle, chronicled in that 7th of Romans, wherein he was led ‘captive to a law,’ and an army of sin within him, ‘warring against the law of his mind,’ presently upon that woful exclamation and outcry there mentioned, ‘O miserable man that I am,’ &c., he falls admiring the grace of justification through Christ,—they are his first words after the battle ended,—‘Now,’ says he, ‘there is no condemnation to them that are in Christ.’ Mark that word now; that now, after such bloody wounds and gashes, there should yet be no condemnation, this exceedingly exalts this grace; for if ever, thought he, I was in danger of condemnation, it was upon the rising and rebelling of these my corruptions, which, when they had carried me captive, I might well have expected the sentence of condemnation to have followed; but I find, says he, that God still pardons me”
Thomas Goodwin, The Works of Thomas Goodwin, vol. 3 (Edinburgh: James Nichol, 1861), 448.
“Reason 2.—It serves exceedingly to illustrate the grace of perseverance, and the power of God therein; for unto the power of God is our perseverance wholly attributed. 1 Pet. 1:5, ‘Ye are kept,’ as with a garrison, as the p 449 word signifies, ‘through the power of God unto salvation.’ And were there not a great and an apparent danger of miscarrying, such a mighty guard needed not. There is nothing which puts us into any danger but our corruptions that still remain in us, which ‘fight against the soul,’ and endeavour to overcome and destroy us. Now, then, to be kept maugre all these, to have grace maintained, a spark of grace in the midst of a sea of corruption, how doth this honour the power of God in keeping us!”
Thomas Goodwin, The Works of Thomas Goodwin, vol. 3 (Edinburgh: James Nichol, 1861), 448–449.
“Reason 3.—Neither would the confusion of the devil in the end be so great, and the victory so glorious, if all sin at first conversion were expelled. For by this means the devil hath in his assaults against us the more advantages, fair play, as I may so speak, fair hopes of overcoming, having a great faction in us, as ready to sin as he is greedy to tempt; and yet God strongly carries on his own work begun, though slowly, and by degrees, backeth and maintains a small party of grace within us to his confusion.”
Thomas Goodwin, The Works of Thomas Goodwin, vol. 3 (Edinburgh: James Nichol, 1861), 449.
“Reason 4.—Lastly, as God doth it to advance his own grace, and confound the devil, so for holy ends that concern the saints themselves; as—
(1.) To keep them from spiritual pride….
(2.) However, if there were no such danger of spiritual pride upon so sudden a rise,—as indeed it befalls not infants, nor such souls as die as soon as regenerated, as that good thief,—yet, however, God thinks it meet to use it as a means to humble his people this way; even as God left the Canaanites in the land to vex the Israelites, and to humble them….
[1.] Nothing humbles so as sin. This made him cry out, ‘O miserable man that I am! ‘He that never flinched for outward crosses, never thought himself miserable for any of them, but ‘gloried in them,’ 2 Cor. 12:10, when he came to be ‘led captive by sin’ remaining in him, cries out, ‘O miserable man!’ And—
[2.] It is nut the sins of a fore-past unregenerate estate that will be enough to do this throughly; for they might be looked upon as past and gone, and some ways be an occasion of making the grace after conversion the more glorious. But present sense humbleth most kindly, most deeply, because it is fresh; and therefore says Paul, ‘O miserable man that I am!’ And again, we are not able to know the depth and height of corruptions at once, therefore we are to know it by degrees. And therefore it is still left in us, that after we have a spiritual eye given us, we might experimentally gauge it to the bottom, and be experimentally still humbled for sin. And experimental humbling is the most kindly, as pity out of experience is. And—
[3.] God would have us humbled by seeing our dependence upon him for inherent grace. And how soon are we apt to forget we have received it, and that in our natures no good dwells! We would not remember that out nature were a step-mother to grace, and a natural mother to lusts, but that we see weeds still grow naturally of themselves. And—
[4.] God would have us not only humbled by such our dependence on him, but by a sense of our continual obnoxiousness to him, and of being in his lurch; and therefore leaves corruption still, that we might ever acknowledge that our necks do even lie on the block, and that he may chop them off; and to sec that ‘in him we’ should not only ‘live and move’ as creatures, but further, that by him we might justly be destroyed every moment, this humbles the creature indeed, Ezek. 36:31, 32.
(3.) As thus to humble them, so that they might have occasion to deny themselves; which to do is more acceptable to God than much more service without it, and therefore the great promise of ‘having a hundred-fold’ is made to that grace.”
Thomas Goodwin, The Works of Thomas Goodwin, vol. 3 (Edinburgh: James Nichol, 1861), 449-50.
“Use 1.—To be meek and charitable to those who fall into sin, as knowing corruption is not fully yet purged out of thyself. This is the Apostle’s admonition upon this ground, Gal. 6:1”
Thomas Goodwin, The Works of Thomas Goodwin, vol. 3 (Edinburgh: James Nichol, 1861), 451.
“Use 2.—Never set thyself any stint or measure of mortification, for still thou hast matter to purge out. Thou must never be out of physic all thy life. Say not, Now I have grace enough, and health enough; but as that great Apostle, ‘Not as if I had as yet attained,’ for indeed thou hast not; still ‘press forward’ to have more virtue from Christ. If thou hast prevailed against the outward act, rest not, but get the rising of the lust mortified, and that rolling of it in thy fancy; get thy heart deaded towards it also; and rest not there, but get to hate it, and the thought of it. The ‘body of death,’ it must not only be ‘crucified with Christ,’ but ‘buried’ also, and so rot, Rom. 6:4, 6; it is ‘crucified to be destroyed,’ says the Apostle there,—that is, to moulder away more and more, after its first death-wound.”
Thomas Goodwin, The Works of Thomas Goodwin, vol. 3 (Edinburgh: James Nichol, 1861), 451.